On the Brink
by Wormtail96
Summary: When you lose everything, what is there to hold you back?


**(a/n) Hi, everyone. I'll just make it clear, I freaking love the Teen Titans. It's a shame it was ended. Of course, all shows have to end, but I genuinely believe a few more good seasons could have come from it. Oh well, that's why we have fanfiction, am I right? Well, anyway, this is the beginning of my first Titan's fic and like how I enjoy most of my superhero stories, it's dark and gritty. **

**Just to let you know, the story will be influenced by a lot of other superhero stories, such as the 'Red Hood' saga (the first chapter title pretty much screams it) and 'Killing Joke', sort of like a homage to all these great stories.**

**P.s. The title may change over time, so keep that in mind.**

* * *

**On the Brink**

**Prologue**

**A Death in the Family**

"Where are they?"

"They're in Kiev. Robin…they have Beast Boy and Raven."

"And where the heck is Cyborg?"

"His icon on the computer shows he is approaching their location. But…he is very far away."

"…he won't make it there in time…will he?"

* * *

"Wow. That looked like it really hurt."

Jinx stood there before the beaten Beast Boy, bating the aluminium bat against her palm. A wicked, twisted smirked pulled at the corners of her mouth, revealing her sharp, poorly cared for teeth. Her eyes had lost any twinkle there was left in them and her pink hairdo now looked more bristly and unkempt.

She put her hands on her hips and turned her head over her shoulder, calling in a mockingly sweet, sing-song voice, "Oh, boooooys! How's Rae-Rae doing?"

Gizmo and Mammoth were several feet away across the stage in her opposite direction. Raven was sat between them, tied in metal shackles to her wooden chair, eyes closed and head tilting to on side. The young women looked like she had been right through hell and back several times. Her whole body was covered in deep cuts, bruises and grazes. From the slumped manner in which she was sitting, it appeared that internally she was not doing all too good either. She must have had at least several broken bones. Her face most of all looked like it had been beaten with a sledgehammer, with both her eyes blackened, her nose smashed, blood trickling out the corner of her mouth and tooth or two missing. Around her neck was a metal and yellow glowing collar. Beast Boy was wearing one too.

"I think she's gone dead on us," Gizmo figured out loud, before pulling out a remote and pressed his thumb against the white button in the middle. "Let's see!"

There was a low whirring sound and Raven suddenly came alive, screaming as loud as her weak lungs would let her. Sparks were flying out her collar as the surface of the yellow parts of the collar glowed.

"Ah, now that's better," Jinx said, her satisfied smirk returning to her face as she held the bat behind the nape of her neck and on her shoulders. She then held the bat up in the air and asked the battered green young man who was sprawled out against the floor, his head inches from her boots, "Hey! Are _you_ still alive? Just wanna make sure."

He mumbled something, which failed to form coherent words due to the fact that his jaw was busted and his mouth was filled with his own blood.

"What was that?" Jinx squatted down and leaned inward, tugging at Beast Boy's pointed ear. "I think I might've smashed your jaw a few swings back, honey. You mind repeating that? And this time, _annunciate."_

Beast Boy turned his head so his dark blue eyes met with her narrow bright pink. His fury resurfaced and with all his strength, he spat the blood in his mouth right in her face and yelled, "I'm gonna kill you, _YOU FUCKING BITCH!"_

_Crack! _Jinx lifted the bat and smashed it against his back, making him bite his lip to withhold his scream. The burning pain shot up his back, making him writhe around against the wooden floor like a worm.

"Now, that was just rude, BB," Jinx pulled out a silk handkerchief and wiped the blood from her face and neck. "And to be honest, I don't think you're in a position to have such poor manners."

Beast Boy turned over on his side and stared up at her, gargling, more blood leaking out his mouth and forming a small pool on the wood, "You won't…get away with this…"

"Oh, please don't!" Jinx now sounded more irritated and she scowled and delivered a powerful stomp on his ribs, enough so that there was a faint cracking sound. The boy now could cover his unbearable pain and screamed out loud. "You really need to come up with better one-liners."

Ignoring her snide comments, Beast Boy tried to do the only thing he could think of: transform. A ravenous tyrannosaurus rex; one that was big enough it could tear Jinx's flesh up like tissue paper. But when he tried, reality bit back hard as an electric current surged throughout his body, making his bones rattle and his eyes burn so much he thought for a moment they were going to explode right out of their sockets.

"It's cool, huh?" Jinx giggled impishly and she lowered the bat under Beast Boy's chin, taping the collar around his neck. "Those things cost us a fortune, but by the looks of it, they were worth every penny!" Her eyebrow then cocked upwards and her eyes twitched, as if trying to look behind her. "Eh-hem! I don't hear any beatdowns going on back there!"

Realising she was talking to them, Gizmo and Mammoth stumbled to find whatever blunt object around them they could find and continued to beat Raven around like a ragdoll. To be perfectly honest, neither was particularly enjoying what they were doing at the moment. Sure, these two were not well known for their morals, but there was something about continuously beating the ever-loving crap out of a semi-conscious opponent that came across as..."crummy", as they would phrase it. Yet despite how they felt, neither one was willing to defy Jinx's orders. No one did. Not nowadays, anyway.

"Now where were we?" Jinx tapped her chin in mock thought. "I think we were…we were gonna…" She snapped her fingers and grinned devilishly. "Oh, yeah, that's right! I was beating you senseless with this here bat!" Holding the bat up like a baseball player, she proceeded to smash it repeatedly against Beast Boy, not before squealing in her giddy, childish manner, "Batter up!"

* * *

Meanwhile, not too far away, the T-Car tore through the streets and alleyways of Kiev, twisting and turning in the elaborate maze of tall, drab grey post-Soviet buildings. It knocked past trash cans, other vehicles and almost pedestrians.

Cyborg's robotic hands gripped the steering wheel so hard it almost broke. He kept his foot slammed down on the accelerator, pushing his "baby" as fast as she would go.

"C'mon! C'MON!" Cyborg grunted with his teeth clenched together, spinning the wheel every few seconds and barely paying any attention to the obstacles in his path.

The computer screen above him was pinpointing his teammate's exact location on a computer generated map of Kiev, quickly focusing in on one building in the city. A number of tabs and an image of the building came up surrounding the highlighted building.

"The abandoned theatre," he deducted, shoving the gearstick forward. It was close, but fearfully not close enough. "Hold on, you two…I'm coming."

Its engine let out a monstrous roar and the car blasted down the street in a narrow white light. He was running out of time.

* * *

Unknownst to Cyborg, Gizmo had been keeping track of his progress on his handheld computer. Seeing his techno rival getting dangerously closer to their location made the boy genius visibly uncomfortable. He grinded his teeth anxiously and tapped the screen, taking the old look at Raven, whom was now barely conscious, but he did not have the courage to call over to Jinx that they had to get out of there soon.

Right now, the leader of the trio had already dropped the bat and was preoccupied with going psycho on the unarmed and broken Titan, jumping around and gibbering like a monkey. She kicked him, punched him, bit him and everything else in her physical power to make him suffer.

Gizmo mustered his courage and finally called over to her, "H-Hey, Jinx? Jinx!"

Jinx turned around, her deranged eyes stabbing like knives into the still really young lad. He did not want to admit it, and perhaps it was a reason for his constant barrage of arrogant remarks and insults; she terrified him.

"Yes, Gizmo, what would you like to say?" She asked in her calmest voice, lowering it to almost a whisper. There was blood on her lips - Beast Boy's blood, off throwing her calm demeanour. She knew he knew she scared him, and revelled in playing around with it.

He held up his computer and told her, trying to maintain his confident composure, "The tinman's nearly here. We gotta bail."

"Relax. See-More's gonna be here with the truck in about, I dunno…" Jinx looked down at her wrist and pulled up her sleeve to show a fancy-looking watch there. "Three…two…"

Honk! Honk!

"Right on time," she grinned, then looked back at her two parnters and pointed at Mammoth, instructing him, "Okay, you, big guy, get the cash, take it to the van and wait there."

Mammoth said not a word, but followed his orders. Taking the heavy gym sack located to his left, he walked off the stage and out the backstage door of the theatre.

"As for you…" Gizmo felt his back stiffen and closed his eyes. "Is the scan on that little Playboy of yours done yet?"

He opened a new page on his computer and answered her, "Sure, it must be by now." The scan was indeed complete. He was not entirely sure why she ordered it, but he wasn't exactly going to question her orders, now was he? She explained she "had a hunch" and that was it. But when he saw the results, a creeping sense of horror came across his face and shaking a bit, he gave the computer to his leader. "Here…"

"Good boy," she snickered, running her thin, bony fingers over top his tiny, bald head. "Now go take down the camera and wait in the van for me."

For the first time since he could remember, Gizmo genuinely felt horrified by his own actions. That, and humiliated by Jinx's condescending treatment, he scuttled off to his right and took down the camera on the tripod with which they had recorded everything that had transpired. Hunching over, the boy genius crept off into the darkness after Mammoth, climbing off the stage and out the open backstage door.

Now it was just the three of them. Jinx, Raven and Beast Boy. As Gizmo was leaving, she took a quick look over the scan results, and once they were alone, a smile appeared on her face. It was a wide-stretching, evil smile that only a true monster could possess.

"Oh…no. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh," she cackled a cackle that grew louder as she continued, and she grabbed her sides. "Huahahahahahahaha! This is just too good!"

Skipping over to Beast Boy's motionless like a schoolgirl, Jinx dropped on her belly to the floor right next to him. She grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head. "You know, I gotta hand it to you, I never thought of you as the type."

Beast Boy just blinked his eyelids and a quivering grown escaped his throat. He was in such extreme pain, that the slightest movement to him was the equivalent of crawling across a field of glass shards.

"In case you're a complete idiot, here," she brought the computer to his vision, which he barely just able to make out. Before any expression of shock or fear made it onto his face, Jinx promptly slammed it back against the floor.

She stood back on her feet and strolled back, hips swinging, to the one person she had been ignoring this whole time. Her good friend, Raven.

"And as for you, Rae-Rae, well…I can't say that I'm not disappointed in you." Jinx rested one hand against the backrest of the chair and grasped tightly Raven's chin with the other. "I mean, you, the dark, brooding Titan with no sense of emotion or humour. Talk about a major downgrade in badass!" Her expression now turned to one of disgust and she pulled back her hand and viciously slapped the girl across the face, knocking her and the chair to the floor. "And to think that I actually a glimmer of respect for you…ah well, I'll get over it. Hahahahahahaha!"

When she was at last bored with her fun, Jinx spun around and made her way to the backstage door to make her and hear team's getaway. As she did so, the sorceress made sure to close out on a witty line, "Well, my darlings, I'm afraid we gotta go now. It's been a fun hour, hasn't it? …well, okay, more for us, but it's hard to say since we've been doing most of the talking, and you've been most rudely silent." She picked up a long black coat from a chair and slipped it on herself. "Anyway, tell bird boy, the troq and tinman we said "hi", and hey…" Jinx had reached the open door and finished, looking back in with a smile and blowing them a kiss, _"Congratulations. _Avoir! Hauhahahahahahahahaha!"

The door slammed shut. Now it was just Beast Boy and Raven, alone together in silence in the abandoned Kiev theatre. Both had been beaten viciously to bloodied pulps. In the past, they had rarely ever been subjected to such prolonged needless cruelty at the hands of their opponents; even most of them had some honour. Jinx had been ruthless. It wasn't Gizmo or Mammoth; they were nothing but goons. It was her. All her.

Beast Boy somehow managed to find the strength to pull in his knees under his stomach and use them to get up. His eyelids flickered open, but his vision out of focus, and clouded with a purple haze. The young superhero could not sit up straight. Every time he tried, the seething pain returned.

But it was not his own welfare he was concerned with, right now. He looked over to Raven and spluttered through his own blood, "Ra…Raven…Raven can you hear me? ...can you hear me?"

She coughed, some of her own spewing out onto the floor. One of her eyes was cut and she could hardly make out the boy laying across the stage from her.

She murmured meekly, straining to find her voice, "B-Beast Boy. I...yeah," she coughed violently again. "I can hear you."

"Listen, Raven, we're gonna…get outta here." He didn't want to admit that inside he knew it wasn't, but he could not say it in front of the one he could about. "Cy…he's coming for us, right now. We'll be alright."

"No…no we won't," Raven muttered, closing her good eye. It looked like she was trying to mediate, but Beast Boy could not be certain. "This is it. It ends tonight."

Forgetting the agony, Beast Boy began pulling himself towards her, clawing at the wooden planks with his good hand (the other Jinx had broken with a swing). As he neared her, he said, "Don't talk like that, Raven. We'll be okay-ugh!" There went one of his ribs, but he went on. "I…I promise."

They were getting closer. Raven managed to raise the hand which the weight of her trapped body was not crushing. She stretched it out and dropped it against the floor for him.

* * *

In their van, Jinx and her men were leaving the scene slowly, pulling up and turning a corner of one of the thousands of tall grey buildings, the abandoned theatre almost out of sight. See-More was at the driver's seat and Mammoth in the passenger's, still holding the gym sack in his hand.

"So, uh…it went well?" See-More asked curiously, but got only silence in response.

Jinx was riding in the backseat with Gizmo, arms and legs crossed and humming a serene tune. Her eyes perked up and she said to her littlest henchman, "Oh, I almost forgot; Gizmo, give mommy her remote."

He scowled at her, not that she gave a damn and took a remote out from his dark green jumpsuit pocket, looking away out the other window as he gave it to his boss.

The sorceress stretched out the antenna and fiddles with some of the switches and buttons, and she giggled to herself, "Try this one on for you size, you bitch." She pressed the final buttons with an imitation "ka-boom". The countdown started.

Beep. Beep. Beep. 13, 12, 11…

* * *

Smashing through the last of the metal gates, the T-Car had the theatre in its head lights. Cyborg, in his desperate pursuit, had collided with so much public property the car looked completely banged up. The bonnet was dented, one of the headlights was smashed, the window was riddled with cracks and one of the doors had come off. He normally would never put his favourite car through this sort of punishment, but his desperation was putting everything to one side.

I'm coming. I won't let you die.

* * *

The tips of their fingers touched each other.

You won't have another chance to say it. Just say it now.

"Raven, I-"

* * *

Jinx lit a cigarette.

* * *

A flash of light, followed by an earth shattering _Boom! _

One second the theatre was there, abandoned, boarded up and dilapidated, and the other, it was gone, replaced by a great big ball of fire and smoke, a bright beacon on the Kiev skyline. The glow quickly faded out, leaving but the thick clouds of black smoke rising into the sky.

"_**NO!" **_

The T-Car screeched against the ground, stopping only when it crashed into a pile of dustbins and black bags of garbage. Cyborg tore his seatbelt off and kicked the door open and made a dash to the smoking rubble that was the theatre.

Cyborg pulled and kicked the heaps of rubble, splintered wood and red hot pieces of metal out of the way. He screamed their names, "RAVEN! BEAST BOY! GUYS, WHERE ARE YOU?" His skin, that is, the few he had left was covered with goose bumps. "RAE! B!"

A groan came from beneath the debris. He could hear it, and recognised it immediately. Raven.

He followed it and in no time found her. She was trapped beneath a still burning beam of wood. Cyborg threw it off her and picked her mangled body up in his arms. It was amazing. She was still alive, but only just.

Carrying her out from the wreckage, Cyborg set her body down gently on the car bonnet, being careful that he did not unintentionally hurt her any more than she already was.

"Rae, it's okay, I got ya," Cyborg lowered his voice reassuringly. "I called in the medics before I got here. You'll be alright."

Blood coming down the corner of her mouth, Raven shifted on the spot, asking her friend, _"Cyborg…Beast Boy. He's...he's still in there."_

Cyborg then remembered his other partner, still buried alive under the remains of the destroyed building. He told her, holding her pale hand, "Wait here. The medics will be here any minute. I'm going in after him." Turning around, he sprinted back to wreckage, leaving Raven to fall unconscious on the car.

After five minutes, his search began to appear futile. What if he couldn't find him? What if the explosion blew his body to pieces? What if-

He found him, his body being crushed by a pile of large rocks. Cyborg frantically shoved them aside and yanked the body out with all his strength.

Cyborg stared down at the long-time friend he held limp in his arms, his face full of sorrow and creeping horror and realisation.

"No," mist formed in the young metal man's real eye. "Garfield…"

Cyborg held his friend close and carried him away from the smoke engulfed site to the car. The blaring lights and sounds of sirens in the distance grew louder as the authorities approached the site of death.

* * *

**(a/n) Before you all say it, yes, I know Jinx became a Titan at the end of the series. However, recently, I've found myself disliking that. It wasn't a bad idea as it reinforces the idea that villains can redeem themselves and fight for the side of good, renouncing their past evil ways. It's just that I personally prefer Jinx as a villainess. There are few villainesses I genuinely like and Jinx is one of them. Therefore, you can consider this a sort of Alternate Universe where Jinx is still a villain and is increasingly becoming a violent and insane one (the craziness being drawn from her first episode, as she was a bit crazy in that one). Perhaps that's being a bit too liberal with her, but hey, again, fanficion. You are allowed to go liberal to an extent.**

**As indicated, I do pretty much prefer Beast Boy/Raven than say, Beast Boy/Terra, but hey, that's just me. I hope you enjoyed this first chapter, and all the intensity and emotional heartbreak that came with it.**


End file.
